Paul Krugman recently wrote a good article on health care, in surprise that Obama and the Democrats didn’t expectsome resistance from the left after bailing out chummy banks and rolling over on health care (among other “compromises”).
Specifically: “Until the idea of the public option came along, a significant faction within the party rejected anything short of true single-payer, Medicare-for-all reform, viewing anything less as perpetuating the flaws of our current system. The public option, which would force insurance companies to prove their usefulness or fade away, settled some of those qualms.”
Without introducing any real competition to insurers yet enforcing an individual mandate to buy insurance, how can somebody who wants real reform support the Democrats on health care? (My position: I think they were elected to end the wars and provide justice, transparency and real health care reform–which sums to “change the way Washington works”–and they haven’t done it.)
The public option as figured before it was killed was a weak competitor to insurance, crippled in its ability to negotiate lower prices for drugs, etc.
Specifically Krugman says:
“Until the idea of the public option came along, a significant faction within the party rejected anything short of true single-payer, Medicare-for-all reform, viewing anything less as perpetuating the flaws of our current system. The public option, which would force insurance companies to prove their usefulness or fade away, settled some of those qualms.”
Without introducing any real competition to insurers yet enforcing an individual mandate to buy insurance, how can somebody who wants real reform support the Democrats on health care? My position: I think they were elected to end the wars and provide justice, transparency and real health care reform–which sums to “change the way Washington works”–and they haven’t done it yet.
The public option as figured before it was killed was already a weak competitor to insurance, crippled in its ability to negotiate lower prices for drugs, etc. It was pretty much only introduced this spring as a kinda lame alternative to fundamental reform because there “just weren’t the votes” to make a real change to health care. I think the public at least needs an option that is a strong nonprofit to compete with the insurance companies. (The insurance providers 20% overheads for profit and admin. costs are killing us)
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